Think you’ve got your head wrapped around The Book of Laughter and Forgetting? Put your knowledge to
the test. Good luck — the Stickman is counting on you!
Q. "It is a death sweetly bluish, like nonbeing. Because nonbeing is an infinite emptiness and empty space is blue and there is nothing more beautiful and more soothing than blue" (VI.12.7). What do Kundera and Tamina think of this version of death?
They love it! Blue is a soothing color.
They hate it because it's a lie. Death is hard work.
They believe colors are inaccurate signifiers of death.
They appreciate the concrete comparison with color.
Q. "...she has many friends: men are not afraid she wants to marry them, and women have no fear she is seeking to deprive them of a husband" (II.3.4). Who is Kundera talking about here?
Eva.
Marketa.
Tamina.
Edwige.
Q. "Men have always been divided into two categories. Worshipers of women, otherwise known as poets, and misogynists, or, more accurately, gynophobes" (V."Boccaccio".5). What is a "misogynist," according to Kundera's Boccaccio?
A man who hates women.
Anyone who hates women.
Women who hate women.
Men who hate traditional femininity.
Q. "He told everyone that he had broken permanently with his father, a well-off farmer. He spat, he said, on the age-old rural tradition of attachment to land and to property" (I.13.5). Why does Mirek do this?
He's trying to impress the Communist Party.
He's trying to impress Zdena.
He's trying to lose Zdena.
He's trying to avoid jail.
Q. "...every love relationship rests on an unwritten agreement unthinkingly concluded by the lovers in the first weeks of their love. They are still in a kind of dream, but at the same time, without knowing it, are drawing up, like uncompromising lawyers, the detailed clauses of their contract" (II.6.11). Whose relationship is Kundera talking about?
Hugo and Tamina's.
Petrarch and Mrs. Petrarch's.
Jan and Edwige's.
Karel and Marketa's.